Tag Archives: SDCC 2008

Cons: Mars, Scary Donuts, Memories & More

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Some convention linkblogging…

This Saturday, February 20, Long Beach Comic-Con will host a one-day Comic Expo 2010. The full weekend-long convention is still on for October.

Comic Convention Memories has been posting old Comic-Con photos (via The Beat).

Walking Donut in a SombreroCon humor: Someone searched for “san diego donut weird” and landed on this photo round-up from San Diego 2008. I can’t imagine why… 😉 The first time I saw these costumes, I remember seeing a little boy of around 5 or so turn to his mother and say, “I don’t like him.” Smart kid.

More con humor: The Beat reveals Wizard World Mars, the latest of Gareb Shamus’ convention acquisitions. Wizard responds by “confirming” the news (with follow-up at the Beat).

Comic-Con’s David Glanzer talks to CBR about attendance sellouts and WonderCon. Full-weekend, Saturday and Friday tickets to this year’s Comic-Con International (San Diego, July 22-25) are sold out, but Thursday and Sunday are still available. Hotel rooms go on sale March 18.

Tickets to WonderCon (San Francisco, April 2-4) went on sale three weeks ago and are still available.

Looking Back: The Flash in 2008

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2008 was a busy, if tumultuous year for the Flash.

The Main Series

As 2008 opened, the Flash was just wrapping up the six-part story “The Wild Wests,” the relaunch featuring Wally West as head of the Flash family and introducing his super-powered twins, Iris and Jai. To put it mildly, it was not received well by fans, and former fan favorite writer Mark Waid quickly left the book.

Flash #243After a one-shot by Keith Champagne, Tom Peyer picked up the regular writing chores and Freddie Williams II stayed on for the 6-part “Fast Money,” which resolved the twins’ super-speed aging problem and gave us a glimpse of an adult Iris West II.

The series wrapped up with the year, as Alan Burnett, Paco Diaz, and Carlo Barberi brought us “This Was Your Life, Wally West.” The four-part story arc looked back at Wally West’s career as Kid Flash, then the Flash, and his relationship with his wife Linda and their children.

Rogues’ Revenge

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1The Rogues’ Gallery were off-limits to start with, as they were off-planet for Salvation Run. Early in the year, DC released the news of Flash: Rogues’ Revenge, a miniseries that would spotlight them after they returned to Earth, going after Inertia for tricking them into killing the Flash. Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins would return to the speedster mythos for six issues.

By the time the series was launched, it had become Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge, and instead of six regular-sized issues it was three oversized issues.

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Convention Behavior

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The post on sexual harassment at Comic-Con on Comics Oughta Be Fun has been making the rounds. It’s disturbing, but worth a read. It lists a few examples of women being harassed during the con, then points out that there’s no written policy against harassment, and no clear procedure for reporting it.

In theory, it shouldn’t be necessary to spell out “Don’t stalk or assault people” in the program. We’re talking about behavior that’s already unacceptable and, once you cross a certain line, illegal. Unfortunately some people either lack basic social graces (I’m trying to keep the language family-friendly, here), or think that costumes give them a free pass.

I do think the convention needs a clear reporting procedure. Let people know they can report incidents to security, and follow through.

They also need better coordination between convention staff and security. My wife and I spent an hour and a half dealing with what we thought was the theft of her purse. She stood up at the end of a panel and it was gone. She reported it to security, filled out a missing property report, checked lost and found, canceled her credit card…and in the end it turned out that the room’s staff had removed it from under her seat during the previous panel break, thinking someone else had left it behind, and put it at the back of the room. But they hadn’t said anything to security about it, and security didn’t ask them.

(Found via several blogs.)

Linkage: Rumors of Bart

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While many fans seem to be taking it as given that Bart Allen will return in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, there’s been considerably less certainty as to where he might continue to appear afterward. Will he return to the present, or stay in the 31st century? Will he return as Impulse, Kid Flash, or the Flash? Will he appear on any sort of regular basis, or just be an occasional guest star?

Rumor column Lying in the Gutters suggests he might be staying with the Legion, or at least be available in that setting:

One San Diegoer tells me, “I was waiting at the Aspen booth at Comic-Con getting a sketch done by current Legion Artist Francis Manapul, when Geoff Johns came over and interrupted to talk to him for a second. Johns had a copy of…his first Teen Titans trade, and handed it to Manapul, which Manapul said, ‘I eventually did get my hands on a copy and read it last night.’ The two of them talked about Bart Allen for a couple of minutes, with Manapul being very complimentary of how he was written. Johns looked around, saw people were watching, and turned his back and the two of them continued to talk inaudibly for about 10 minutes about something before Johns left.

“Combine that with the vague question that Johns asked at one panel: ‘Does anyone miss Bart Allen?’ and there has to be something there.”

Rich Johnston gives the rumor a yellow light on his traffic-light scale of reliability, so even he isn’t sure what — if anything — the conversation means. It could mean absolutely nothing.

J.G. Jones is the Flash

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According to CBR’s coverage of the J.G. Jones Spotlight panel at Comic-Con, the artist used himself as the reference for the iconic Flash cover on Final Crisis #2:

Finally, who did Jones use for photo reference for the Flash image on the cover of “Final Crisis” #2? “I used me!” But self-reliance has its price, Jones revealed, because the posing process slows things down. “I have to pose, take a shot, look at it, pose, take a shot, look at it…” Fortunately for readers, Jones’s patience tends to pay off.

Linkage: Ethan Van Sciver on the Future of Wally West

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CBR reports on last week’s Spotlight on Ethan Van Sciver at Comic-Con. Among other things, he talked about redesigning Wally West’s costume and how he sees the personalities of Barry Allen and Wally West.

“I’m redesigning Wally West’s costume right now, and it’s terrifying.” While Sinestro’s costume, with its seemingly random blue color and “jester collar,” was ready for a redesign in Van Sciver’s eyes, “Wally West is the most perfectly designed costume ever, aside from Green Lantern’s costume, in my opinion.” Van Sciver said the challenge was to redo the costume without either making it less cool or more cool than Barry Allen’s and thus implying that one character is better than the other.

“I want Barry to come back and be King Arthur. He’s the most straight-laced, perfect Flash, rigid in his morality and his ethics,” making the looser, cooler, more laid-back Wally a Lancelot figure. Van Sciver told the audience “Kick me in the ass if I fail.”

So there’s at least some hope for Wally fans that he won’t be totally shoved off to the side. Maybe.

On the other hand, he also confirmed that the monthly Flash series will “stop” for Flash: Rebirth. How it will be relaunched afterward — picking up where it left off, or where Barry’s series left off — or with a new — he wouldn’t say.